


Dirty Tactics

by brightwhiteparabolas



Series: Alfred Pennyworth's Bookmarks (All Rights Reserved by the T. and M. Wayne Foundation) [4]
Category: Super Sons (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cute Kids, Family Fluff, Gen, House Cleaning, Mud, Parenthood, Tags Are Hard, Wet & Messy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-04 12:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21197993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightwhiteparabolas/pseuds/brightwhiteparabolas
Summary: Jon and Damian have arrived at the Kent's home in the early hours of the morning, covered with glory and another, much less pleasant substance.  Lois is not happy.





	Dirty Tactics

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mystik_Owl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mystik_Owl/gifts).

> Alfred says: Upon a closer look, one realizes that this piece features not just an unusual amount of dirt but a disgraceful number of adverbs. One lives and learns not to over-write. Less is always more, as Bruce used to say to most of his girlfriends. That was when he was still in his twenties. He has become subtler since then.

“Why - the - _fu _\- I mean - _heck _\- did you have to fight CLAYFACE?” yelped Lois.

“Um - because he was doing bad stuff?” ventured her son. He yawned hugely, and another immense blob of brownish goo rolled down the back of his head and hit the carpet.

It was early Sunday morning, and Jonathan Lane Kent was standing in the middle of the Kent’s living room, which was partly decorated for Christmas.A jaunty little tree stood in one corner with a few open boxes of decorations spread around its base.Greeting cards were displayed on a double string that stretched across the fireplace, which faced a coffee table holding a plate of cookies and a stack of Clark's car magazines.The snow was coming down hard outside, and besides the two bedraggled Super Sons it was an Instagram-worthy scene of pre-festive family cosiness.

But it was the snow that was the problem.It would be terrible to ask the boys to shake themselves down outside in blizzard-strength weather when they were already exhausted.

“It was an excellent fight,” said Damian.His face was smug despite the fact that he was standing almost knee-deep in goo.“I have always told Father that we are equal to the best.”He bent over stiffly and grabbed two cookies from the coffee table. A dollop of mud slid off one of the spikes on his gauntlets and landed next to the cookies.

“Didn’t you realize that all this - _stuff_ \- would start melting off you the moment you came indoors?” Lois asked despairingly. “I have no idea how to get it off the carpet. And that Justice League offsite meeting is supposed to be starting in here in about four hours. For God’s sake, come into the kitchen and shed the rest of the mud in there.”

“I am not sure I can walk, Lois.”Damian peeled off his green mask and stared at her. His face was so streaked with mud that it was difficult to tell where his eyebrows began or ended.

“I’m sure that your father would tell you to try,” said Lois.

“We’re hungry, Mom,” said Jon.

Lois did not respond. She folded her arms across her dressing gown and led the way across the hall.

She was not at all happy.Maritza had helped her clean the house from top to bottom yesterday, and now this.Not only was her living room photo op ruined - she was trying to do everything she could to boost her profile as the new anchor of Planet Media’s weekly round-up show - but she would now have to spend a good part of Monday morning waiting for someone to answer the Justice League helpline with information on how to remove stains caused by shape-shifting mudmen.And since Jon wasn’t eligible for the JL’s laundry service, she’d have to take care of his costume herself. Come to think of it, it would make way more sense to throw it out and ask Clark to get him a new Superboy shirt printed up at Staples.

There was a rap on the door, which the Kents rarely locked, and a cheerful blonde person stepped inside.She was wearing Ugg boots and a bright red puffer jacket with a woolly scarf thrown across it.

Lois threw her hands out.

“What can I say, Kara. Boys. Clayface. Why?“

“Hey, Kara,” said Jon, sounding less than enthusiastic.

Supergirl shook her head to get rid of the snow on her striped bobble hat. Then she shut the door behind herself and the white, powdery outdoors.

“I was at the gas station about twenty miles away, and heard you talking,” she said. “So I stopped in early.” She looked the boys up and down with her bright blue eyes and whistled. “Weird is supposed to stay in Gotham. What happened?”

Damian opened his mouth to speak, but Lois waved a hand at him and ushered everyone into the kitchen. It might not be Wayne Manor, she thought, but it looked very nice since they'd had the roof fixed and those awful peeling walls repainted in an on-trend shade of warm grey. And now it was going to be covered in enormous flakes and lumps of leftover Clayface. So be it. She sighed in resignation, and started pulling white plastic bags out of a wall cupboard.

“Gross,” said Supergirl, poking her finger into a slab of amorphous brown matter that still clung to the right side of Damian’s utility belt. She waggled her finger in the air, examined it, and then took a small bottle of hand sanitizer from the pocket of her puffer jacket. “This stuff melts off and then turns into gelatinous goop again? Poor you, Lois.”

“We’re really hungry, Mom.”

“Yep. My living room looks like a herd of oversized cows just defecated all over it.Exactly the family-friendly image that Planet Media wants for me.” Lois was pushing the bags back into the cupboard. They would clearly not be up to the job. That mud was too dense and sticky.

Jon had installed himself at the sink and was frantically splashing water over the back of his head. Filthy spray was cascading from his cape onto the area around the sink and over the floor.

“Vinegar, Jon,” called Damian, who was leaning against the broom cupboard.“Father and Richard say that a mix of vinegar and baking soda is necessary."

“No-one is having a vinegar and baking soda hair wash in this kitchen,” said Lois.“At least, not just now.Would you please turn off the tap, Jon?”

Jon turned around reluctantly to face his mother, his first cousin once removed, and his teammate.His face was miserable, Lois noted, and probably not just because he was hungry.He had always hated dirt, ever since he had been a small child and this encounter must have taken a lot out of him.She felt a twinge of tenderness.The situation called for pancakes and hot chocolate, even if it meant that the little devil Damian would also have to be fed.

“Jon did a very good job,” Damian was explaining to Kara.“Naturally, it was my idea, but he was able to reduce Clayface to a pond of scalding hot bubbles inside a disused swimming pool display. Clayface escaped from a prisoner transport van after transforming himself into a Metropolis police officer and escaping to a building supplies store. The police were then able to cooperate with us to seal off the swimming pool surface area.If one cannot use a batarang or a bo staff, heat vision is certainly quite useful.”

Supergirl looked at Damian and raised an eyebrow.

“Heat vision is quite useful, you say.”

Her ironic tone was lost on Batman’s only true son.

“Yes, it can be quite useful. As can freeze breath in some situations.”

Jon had removed his cape and was holding it up uncertainly, looking for an inoffensive place to put it down.It was covered with dark, crust-like formations, some of which were beginning to suppurate and throb like muddy wounds.Lois, rummaging through a cupboard below the sink, thrust a large black garbage bag in Jon’s direction.She pushed another one towards Damian.

“Dad can take your costume to the dump after the meeting,” she told Jon. “It's not worth cleaning it. Damian, you’ll have to put on some of Jon’s clothes for now. Everything you’re wearing will need to be bagged up, and we’ll figure out with Alfred what to do next. Okay?”

Much to her surprise, Damian nodded. Lois turned to Kara.

“So. What should Clark and I do about the living room? Move to my parents for at least three weeks? Beg Shazam to help out? Burn the whole place down and hope that the insurance company buys the story? The League will have to meet in the basement. It's too late for them to reschedule now."

Supergirl shook her head, looking thoughtful.

“You’re seeing this all wrong, Lo,” she said. “The kids made the mess, they can clean it up.No need for you to solve the problem for them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Get Jon to freeze all the shi - I mean, all the goo in place. I mean, really freeze it so it’s solid. Every single scrap of it. What's the point of freeze breath if you can’t get him to clean up after himself once in a while?"

"I don't get it, Kara. Is this some kind of Kryptonian joke?"

"Wait. I'm not through. That's step one. Step two is Damian scrapes the goo off with a batarang or a dagger. If it's frozen solid, that won't take long, and don’t tell me he doesn’t have a bunch of sharp things in his belt that he's not supposed to have, because I know that kid. The two of them can stuff a few garbage bags full of solid goo, and Clark can drive it down to the dump later. No-one will know what it is, even if they're dumb enough to open the bags, and then you're all done."

Chin in her hands, Lois considered the idea. "You think it'll work?"

"Course it'll work," said Supergirl. Then she had another bright idea. "It shouldn't leave any stains at all, if the freeze is applied with enough focus. I'll show him."

Jon's face was uncharacteristically stubborn above his soaking wet neckline.

"Breakfast," he said. "Mom, I can't freeze anything on an empty stomach. I just can't."

"Of course you can have breakfast. I just need to get you into different clothes first, honey. And Damian too."

Three hours later, everyone was sitting in the kitchen again. They had been joined by a bemused Clark, who had been tasked with conveying sixteen large black garbage bags to the local dump after the afternoon's Justice League meeting was over. The garbage bags themselves were standing outside on the Kent's back porch. Although the snow had abated by now, the local raccoons were wise enough to give the bags a wide berth, sensing that their contents were somewhat more potent than the usual kitchen scraps.

Damian was playing with the sleeves of one of Jon's rugby shirts, which hung over his knuckles, and eyeing Supergirl sideways.

"Spit it out," said Supergirl.

“Can I see you lift the refrigerator with your toe?”

“But I can do that,” said Jon, wounded.

“Yes, but I like the way that she does it better. Like a cheerleading kick."

Supergirl shrugged, and walked over to the fridge. One fluid forward motion, and the Kent's double-doored General Electric was balancing motionless on the tip of her sock-clad foot.

"There ya go, kid. Happy?"

Lois said nothing about the levitated fridge. She knew from experience that Kara wouldn't break a single egg or spill a drop of milk, but she thought that she saw something far more worrying and nudged her husband with her elbow. 

"Do you see what I see, Clark?"

"What do you see, Lo?"

"There's a spot of mud under the fridge that the boys didn't get."

"I don't think I see anything."

"Kara's bright blue sock is obscuring my field of vision," said Damian. His green eyes were very wide.

Jon groaned and let his face drop toward the table.  
  
"Since when did you have super vision, Mom?"

**Author's Note:**

> Mystik and any other Super Sons fans, it's fine to dislike this even if it's a gift. I don't get hung up on that stuff. In fact, LoL, I probably deserve it, I should have been working on other stuff.


End file.
